Japan to resume commercial whaling after confirming it will quit International Whaling Commission

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Japan is to resume commercial whaling in July after withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission.

On Wednesday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said: “Regrettably, we have reached a decision that it is impossible in the IWC to seek the coexistence of states with different views.”

The whaling activity will be limited to the country’s territorial waters and its 200-mile economic zone along its coast.

IWC introduced a suspension on all commercial whaling in 1982 due to a dwindling whale population with Japan joining six years later – switching their focus to 'research whaling'.

The research programme has been criticised as a cover for commercial hunting as the meat is sold on the market at home.
Japan says it is leaving the International Whaling Commission to resume commercial hunts.

Link.

[Batman]

And this is how TVH happens

[AniThyng]

And this is how TVH happens

TVH?

[Broomstick]

The Voyage Home, Star Trek movie based on the notion that the Earth is almost destroyed because in the future humpback whales are extinct.

[Tribble]

The Voyage Home, Star Trek movie based on the notion that the Earth is almost destroyed because in the future humpback whales are extinct.

Which did give us one of the most hilarious dialogues in sci-fi, where the humpback whales and the probe have a whole conversation while we the audience have no f-ing clue what the hell they are talking about.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

The Voyage Home, Star Trek movie based on the notion that the Earth is almost destroyed because in the future humpback whales are extinct.

Which did give us one of the most hilarious dialogues in sci-fi, where the humpback whales and the probe have a whole conversation while we the audience have no f-ing clue what the hell they are talking about.

Spock mind melding with whales was funnier. As were the hijnks in the hospital.

(I always ad libbed the convo between the probe and the whales)

[The Romulan Republic]

https://globalnews.ca/news/4794565/japa ... ling-2019/

TOKYO — Japan announced Wednesday that it is leaving the International Whaling Commission to resume commercial hunts for the animals for the first time in 30 years, but said it would no longer go to the Antarctic for its much-criticized annual killings.

Japan switched to what it calls research whaling after the IWC imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in the 1980s, and now says stocks have recovered enough to resume commercial hunts.


READ MORE: Anti-whalers say Icelandic hunters killed protected blue whale

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Japan would resume commercial whaling in July “in line with Japan’s basic policy of promoting sustainable use of aquatic living resources based on scientific evidence.”

He added that Japan is disappointed that the IWC — which he said is dominated by conservationists — focuses on the protection of whale stocks even though the commission has a treaty mandate for both whale conservation and the development of the whaling industry.

“Regrettably, we have reached a decision that it is impossible in the IWC to seek the coexistence of states with different views,” he said at a news conference.
Suga said the commercial hunts would be limited to Japan’s territorial waters and its 200-mile (323-kilometer) exclusive economic zone along its coasts. He said Japan would stop its annual whaling expeditions to the Antarctic and northwest Pacific oceans. Non-signatory states are not allowed to do so, according to Japanese Fisheries Agency officials.

The IWC imposed the moratorium on commercial whaling three decades ago due to a dwindling whale population. In 1987, Japan switched to what is calls research whaling, but the program has been criticized as a cover for commercial hunting since the meat is sold on the market at home.

WATCH: Calgary researchers uncover century-old whaling wreckage in Canada’s Arctic

Japanese officials said Japan, even after leaving the whaling convention, will remain as an observer to the IWC and plans to continue participating in the group’s scientific meetings and annual conferences.

The environmental group Greenpeace condemned Wednesday’s announcement and disputed Japan’s view that whale stocks have recovered, and noted that ocean life is being threatened by pollution as well as overfishing.

“The declaration today is out of step with the international community, let alone the protection needed to safeguard the future of our oceans and these majestic creatures,” Sam Annesley, executive director of Greenpeace Japan, said in a statement. “The government of Japan must urgently act to conserve marine ecosystems, rather than resume commercial whaling.”

Australia’s government, often a vocal critic of Japan’s whaling policies, said in a statement that it was “extremely disappointed” with Japan’s decision to quit the commission.

READ MORE: Japanese vessel caught with dead whale onboard; accused of whale hunting

However, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters joined Australia in welcoming Japan’s withdrawal from the southern ocean. Japan was the only country with an ambition to return to commercial whaling in the Antarctic Ocean.

Japanese Fisheries Agency official and longtime IWC negotiator Hideki Moronuki said Japan would use the IWC’s method to carefully determine a catch quota on the basis of science, but declined to give an estimate. He said Japan plans to use seven existing whaling hubs on the Pacific coast for the upcoming commercial hunts.

Moronuki said Japan is starting with a modest plan because it has to figure out if or how commercial whaling can be a viable industry. “What’s most important is to have a diverse and stable food supply,” he said.

WATCH: Japan caught with dead whale on ship; accused of whale hunting

The Fisheries Agency said Japan plans to catch three kinds of whale that are believed to have sufficient stocks — minke, sei and Bryde’s.

Japan has hunted whales for centuries, but has reduced its catch following international protests and declining demand for whale meat at home. The withdrawal from the IWC may be a face-saving step to stop Japan’s ambitious Antarctic hunts and scale down the scope of whaling to around the Japanese coasts.

Japan slashed its annual quota in the Antarctic by about one third after the International Court of Justice ruled in 2014 that the country’s research whaling program wasn’t as scientific as it had argued. Japan currently hunts about 600 whales annually in the Antarctic and the Northern Pacific.

READ MORE: SeaWorld, Humane Society push for Obama to help end Japanese whaling

Fisheries officials have said Japan annually consumes thousands of tons of whale meat from the research hunts, mainly by older Japanese seeking a nostalgic meal. It’s a fraction of the country’s whale meat supply of about 200,000 tons before the IWC moratorium. Critics say they doubt commercial whaling can be a sustainable industry because younger Japanese may not view the animals as food.

Nonetheless, Japanese lawmakers want to promote whales not only as a source of protein but as part of Japan’s cultural tradition.

“We hope the resumption of commercial whaling will lead to the economic revitalization of (whaling) communities,” Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Takamori Yoshikawa told a meeting of his ruling party’s whaling committee.

Kazutaka Sangen, mayor of Taiji, a central Japanese town known for dolphin hunts, welcomed the decision and vowed to stick with scientific way of stock management so that Japan’s position on whaling can gain understanding from the international community.

Suga said that Japan would notify the IWC of its decision by Dec. 31 and that it remains committed to international cooperation on proper management of marine life even after its IWC withdrawal.

— Associated Press writer Steve McMorran in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to this report.

Sigh... Humanity's impulse to move backward remains strong. At least they say that they'll stop the arctic expeditions and confine it to their territorial waters.

[The Romulan Republic]

Ultimately, I think that this is yet another manifestation of the dangerous global trend away from international cooperation and towards the supremacy of nationalism and national sovereignty as the highest right.

Edit: And before anyone accuses me of singling out the Japanese, the Norwegian whalers can go suck a dick too.

Edit: Sorry, didn't see that it was already posted. My bad, please merge.

[AniThyng]

The Voyage Home, Star Trek movie based on the notion that the Earth is almost destroyed because in the future humpback whales are extinct.

Ah right. Didn't quite make the contextual leap in my mind.

STIV:TVH maybe. Heh.

Anyhow, I suppose what happens next is everyone sees there are no concrete consequences and goes on to just fish whatever they want and we are the last generation to have tuna, anchovies, sardines and mackerel to eat as regular food... Frankly I think it's more likely than humpbacks going extinct since that's not what Japanese hunt to begin with.

[AniThyng]

Ultimately, I think that this is yet another manifestation of the dangerous global trend away from international cooperation and towards the supremacy of nationalism and national sovereignty as the highest right.

Edit: And before anyone accuses me of singling out the Japanese, the Norwegian whalers can go suck a dick too.

Edit: Sorry, didn't see that it was already posted. My bad, please merge.

This is only because on this particular topic Japan is the outlier. If this was about something else where general international opinion was against your values, the fact that nation states exist and can assert thier own ways would be a benefit...

Also, clearly Japan feels that there will be few consequences, and they are probably right. Most countries are not going to go far enough to censure Japan on this.

[The Romulan Republic]

Ultimately, I think that this is yet another manifestation of the dangerous global trend away from international cooperation and towards the supremacy of nationalism and national sovereignty as the highest right.

Edit: And before anyone accuses me of singling out the Japanese, the Norwegian whalers can go suck a dick too.

Edit: Sorry, didn't see that it was already posted. My bad, please merge.

This is only because on this particular topic Japan is the outlier. If this was about something else where general international opinion was against your values, the fact that nation states exist and can assert thier own ways would be a benefit...

Actually, I would still regard nationalism and withdrawls from international cooperation inherently damaging, and if I found the global status quo unsatisfactory (as I do on many points), I would support working to change the global status quo, not disconnecting from the rest of the world. More to the point, I regard such efforts as ultimately futile, at least in many cases. We live in an interconnected world. In this case, Japan will be hurt by the global backlash, and the world will be hurt by the drop in whale populations. But they're doing it anyway.

Also, clearly Japan feels that there will be few consequences, and they are probably right. Most countries are not going to go far enough to censure Japan on this.

Oh, they can do it if they really want to push the issue despite any backlash, yes. Because for all the talk about saving the whales, most of the world puts whales fairly low on their list of priorities.

I will admit that there is a silver lining here though, in that thanks to the concept of national boundaries, these hunts will apparently be limited to Japanese waters. So there's that.

[Sea Skimmer]

It sounds to me like Japan got tired of subsidizing whaling in remote oceans, and decided to cut the cost by whaling closer to home. The article alludes to this as well, this actually may turn out to be a step towards Japan abolishing the state subsidy, which would be a great thing. Whaling will never be a commercial success for them, the ships are too expensive, and the one whale factory ship Japan has is getting very old for a commercial hull, it's already well past its design lifetime. They were talking about replacing it earlier this year, which would have been entirely state funded, this policy shift may mean that doesn't happen.

They also aren't wrong on the technical point that the IWC had a specific founding mandate to regulate and develop commercial whaling on a sustainable but had no actual interest in doing so anymore. If Japan is going to restrict this activity to its EEZ then it's still a major win for international law.

Also remember Japan always objected to the full suspension of whaling, and was only strong armed into it by US threats to cut Japanese quotas for crab fishing off Alaska. Then the US abolished the quotas anyway soon after. This whole subject is not an astounding endorsement of international cooperation. It's actually a case of naked power politics.

[SCRawl]

Threads merged.

[Zaune]

It sounds to me like Japan got tired of subsidizing whaling in remote oceans, and decided to cut the cost by whaling closer to home. The article alludes to this as well, this actually may turn out to be a step towards Japan abolishing the state subsidy, which would be a great thing. Whaling will never be a commercial success for them, the ships are too expensive, and the one whale factory ship Japan has is getting very old for a commercial hull, it's already well past its design lifetime. They were talking about replacing it earlier this year, which would have been entirely state funded, this policy shift may mean that doesn't happen.

Which raises the question of why they're bothering to do this at all, if whaling is both commercially non-viable and bringing a lot of diplomatic ill-will down on the Japanese government.

[Sea Skimmer]

Which raises the question of why they're bothering to do this at all, if whaling is both commercially non-viable and bringing a lot of diplomatic ill-will down on the Japanese government.

Old people politics and for long term consistency concerning the absolutism of EEZ rights and rights to international use of the open sea. Japan is keep this up as a hedge against the rest of the world trying to strong arm some kind of further 'agreement' which would put fishing quotas on the entire ocean. Being a country that sorta has rule of law and all that, Japan isn't very fond of that idea since it'd actually end up largely obeying it, while other people in Asia probably would not. I suspect Japan would get less ill-will is more people knew how the US deliberately screwed them in the past on this.

I mean it isn't for nothing that the English basically became a global superpower from fighting wars over fishing rights in Europe.

But as Japan's population ages the first issue is becoming less relevant, while the second issue, while a serious topic in the 1980s and into the 1990s has largely been dropped, though attempts to control certain forms of fishing in international waters continue. This is going to come back though, and a lot sooner then later from the looks of it. It's a very big deal for a place like Japan which simply has very little capacity to farm meat on land or even build fish farms offshore.

[Broomstick]

In some ways, I'm more concerned with Japan eating all the tuna rather than all the whales.

Realistically, what is the market for dead whales these days? Whale oil has been replaced by petroleum. Few nations use them as food.

More reasonable, at this point, IMO, rather than a total ban is a limited allowance without the need for claiming "scientific research", with an emphasis on the more numerous and (relatively) faster breeding smaller whales. That would keep nations still whaling engaged with the rest of the world. If the rest of the world can show some lenience on this then nations like Japan might be more willing to accept limits on things like bluefin tuna catches, which is a species that is world-wide being eaten into danger of extinction. Given that threats to the ocean go well beyond the great whales into all sorts of critters that people eat international cooperation on preserving fisheries is vital to our collective future.

Also - if Japan really does stick to its territorial waters it is going to limit what damage they can do, as whales range all over the world. The downside, for Japan, is that the whales might catch on and simply leave Japanese waters alone.

[mr friendly guy]

Also - if Japan really does stick to its territorial waters it is going to limit what damage they can do, as whales range all over the world. The downside, for Japan, is that the whales might catch on and simply leave Japanese waters alone.

Its territorial waters is only 12 nautical miles. Its EEZ is 200 nautical miles. Although that depends whether it intersects another EEZ, then the boundary is usually negotiated. I assume though since it hunts in the pacific, it will be the EEZ east of Japan where I don't think another country's EEZ will interact with it.

1 nautical mile = 1.852 km = 1.15 miles

[Broomstick]

Even with a 200 nautical mile EEZ the damage they would cause would still be limited.